BIG TECH REALLY MANAGED TO MAKE EVERYONE HATE IT: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech? The Judiciary Committee voted 21-20 to split up Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. What happened was unbelievable.

It’s been an extraordinary week. On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled against the NCAA for abusing its monopoly over the terms and wages of student athletes. Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee, which is the body that has jurisdiction over antitrust law, wrote and voted on legislation to break up big tech firms Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. There are problems with the bills, and I’ll get into them. But the underlying content is less important than the political message, which is that breaking up big tech is looking increasingly inevitable.

Meanwhile, the new Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan has taken full control of the agency. She’s hired acting directors to run the bureaus, and announced that the FTC will be holding open commission meetings where the public can watch the commissioners vote and debate things. Open meetings haven’t happened in decades, so this is something of a shock to the agency. There’s even a period where the public gets to talk back to the commissioners. Imagine that. The underlying agenda is pretty aggressive (though in the administrative weeds), and starts with finalizing a rule against lying about Made in USA labels. (If you want to sign up to speak, you can do so here.) . . .

What has been happening since the financial crisis of 2008, and what continues today, is nothing short of a revolution in the way Americans think about political economy and monopoly power. We haven’t had such ferment over these issues since the 1890s or 1930s, during the Gilded Age and New Deal. Any one of these bills put forward would be the biggest strengthening of Federal antitrust enforcement in at least fifty years, so that all six passed out of committee – especially the bill that breaks up these firms by statute – is remarkable.

There is one other important aspect of what these bills mean. Put simply, they show representative politics can work. Big tech lobbied aggressively against these bills, and lost the debate. Yes, there are corruption problems, but ideas and investigations matter. Republicans and Democrats actually came together and decided, for once, to govern.

Well, it’s not like these guys got where they are through their social skills. Still it’s an amazing reversal in a surprisingly short time.